Americans fret about mystery virus and illegal kids

Limbaugh: Is illness tied to Obama's release of immigrant children all over U.S.?

Just weeks after the Obama administration let more than 37,000 illegal-alien children into the U.S. without health screening, more than 1,000 kids across 10 states have been stricken with a respiratory virus – prompting widespread concerns about a major outbreak sweeping across the nation.

On his Monday show, talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh explored the possibility of a link between the flood of illegal aliens and the spread of a severe and rare respiratory virus known as Enterovirus D68, or EV-D68.

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"Obama will not tell anybody where all of the children that have crossed the border in the last four months have been relocated to," Limbaugh said.

"There are a bunch of people who want to know. We had these kids cross the border from El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, wherever they came from in Central America, and they were processed real quickly. They were gotten in, gotten out, and they've been distributed all over the country. And Obama won't tell anybody where he put 'em. ... The regime will not announce where they are."

Limbaugh asked, "Are the two stories related or are they not? Does this sweeping, mysterious virus that's multiplying across the Midwest, does it have anything to do with it or not? We don't know. That's the answer. We just don't know. But some people think there may be some kind of a connection."

Another talk-radio giant, Michael Savage, blasted Obama for releasing the illegal-alien children in all 50 states: "This population in America, which once enjoyed the greatest health on earth, is now being devolved into a second-world nation in terms of health because Obama is so corrupt, was so ignorant, was so evil that he's taken what was once the greatest nation on earth and devolving us into a second nation status."

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Savage, who earned a doctorate in epidemiology at the University of California at Berkeley, declared on his show Monday, "For 20 years, I've been trying to warn America about the unscreened immigrants being brought in. Now, of course, it's coming home to roost and the American people are being lied to by the Centers for Disease Transmission. They used to be the CDC; they're now the CDT.

"Instead of stopping disease spread, they're encouraging it by not speaking out against bringing in infected children and putting them in our public schools, right? It's astounding to me what they can get away with because of the ignorance of the public. Common sense is gone. … What do you expect to happen if you put a kid with a certain virus into a school where they've never been exposed to that virus? It's called an epidemic breakout."

Listen to Savage's comments on the issue Monday:

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement has released a state-by-state breakdown of 37,477 unaccompanied children released to sponsors across America.

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Five states where the federal government released the most children include:

The states currently impacted by the outbreak include Missouri, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio and Oklahoma – states that have received some of the smallest numbers of illegal-alien minors under the program.

The following map illustrates the virus outbreak in the Midwest and the number of children each state has accepted:

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Enterovirus outbreak in U.S. states and unaccompanied illegal-alien children released to sponsors in each state (WND illustration)

Benjamin N. Haynes, CDC senior spokesman for the infectious disease team, told WND there's "no connection" between the virus outbreak and the Obama administration's relocation of illegal aliens across America who have come across the U.S.-Mexico border.

On his show, Savage also excoriated the government agency, stating, "The CDC is claiming they don't know why this rhinovirus is suddenly breaking out in your area. ... Don't you think it would be rational to say, 'Wait a minute. Let's look at these clusters to see if these kids are in schools where Obama dumped illegal aliens? You know that the government will not release the schools or the districts when they move these kids from Guatemala into this country? They won't even disclose where they are?"

On Monday, the CDC named two hospitals that have been treating patients examined and hospitalized with severe respiratory illness:

University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children's Hospital in Illinois(EV-D68 was identified in 11 of 14 specimens)

A third hospital, Children's Hospital Colorado, confirmed that 19 of 25 samples were confirmed to be EV-D68. According to the Denver Post, hospital officials say they've treated more than 900 children for severe respiratory illness.

WND also contacted Children's Mercy Hospital, Children's Hospital Colorado, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to ask whether any of the patients had been part of the illegal-alien refugee resettlement program but hadn't received a response at the time of this report.

A spokesman for the University of Chicago Medical Center told WND, "At the University of Chicago Medicine, these cases we have seen have been typical of our usual demographic, from all walks of life."

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Symptoms of the virus are similar to those of the common cold and include coughing, difficulty breathing, rash and sometimes fever or wheezing. The CDC says there are no available vaccines or specific treatments for the virus, which isn't typically fatal. Most children recover from it in about a week, though it can develop into a more serious illness – especially in patients with asthma.

Other diseases emerging among Border Patrol agents, he said, include H1N1 Swine flu and chicken pox.

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"The Border Patrol is being threatened with lawsuits and firing if they disclose this," he said. "Congressmen are being turned away from the border as they go to investigate this surge of infected illegal aliens being thrown across the border at us."

Speaking to his critics, Savage pointed to his academic qualifications.

"It's easy for you to say I'm simply an alarmist or a racist, I'm a this-ist or a that-ist," he said. "Well you've got it all wrong. The only 'ist' I am is an epidemiologist. I am not a racist. I am not an alarmist. I am an epidemiologist by training."

In her June 17, 2014, WND column, Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet warned that illegal aliens crossing the U.S.-Mexico border were carrying the diseases and cited her experience working on medical projects in Central and South America since 2009.

"A public health crisis, the likes of which I have not seen in my lifetime, is looming," Dr. Vliet wrote. "Hardest hit by exposures to these difficult-to-treat diseases will be elderly, children, immunosuppressed cancer-patients, patients with chronic lung disease or congestive heart failure."

She also warned, "Vaccine-preventable diseases like chicken pox, measles and whooping cough spread like wildfire among unvaccinated children. Other illnesses, along with scabies and head lice, also thrive as children are transported by bus and herded into crowded shelters – courtesy of the federal government. Treatment costs are borne by taxpayers."

WND also reported in August when an agent stationed at the McAllen, Texas, Border Patrol station told a radio host that diseases carried by illegal aliens crossing the Rio Grande are "slipping through the cracks" and will soon begin affecting the entire nation, possibly even "coming to your town."

Thirteen-year Border Patrol veteran Chris Cabrera is also vice president of the Local 3307 chapter of the National Border Patrol Council, the exclusive representative of approximately 17,000 agents and support personnel assigned to the U.S. Border Patrol.

"It's not always the ideal medical care," Cabrera confessed, "and a lot of it is slipping through the cracks. … We're not set up for this, and we're inviting more problems. The thing is, these [illegal immigrants] aren't staying down here in the border region. This problem isn't contained in the border areas. [They] are coming in here, they're going north, and it's going to affect the entire country. It's going to affect the New Yorks, the Washington, D.C.s, the Chicago, the Dallas, even the Kansas, the Iowa, that's where they're headed, and that's where it's headed."

"There is a logistical nightmare these scarce diseases impose on the medical community," he told WND. "The White House must stop neglecting the consequences of its reckless, open-border policies and protect the health and safety of our citizens – not to mention the security of our nation."

In June, Dr. Jane Orient, an internal medicine specialist and the executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, said, "This really should not be a political issue, but rather a public health and humanitarian issue. We already have overburdened emergency rooms, we already have a serious shortage of intravenous solutions for rehydrating people, so, you know, when you're importing, say, up to 100,000 people who are susceptible to something like [tuberculosis or norovirus], it affects not only those children but anyone they come in contact with."

She added, "We could very easily have a big public health catastrophe. This could really put a huge burden on our public health facilities as well as just our emergency rooms for treating common diseases."